Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #Autonowashing

Most recents (15)

Over the past year or so I have wanted to believe that the Tesla story had turned a corner, and that long-overdue consequences had become inevitable. Today I find myself recommitting to the one thing that has been true all along: nothing is inevitable. Justice must be fought for.
Everyone has been so focused on the tech and the money, that nobody has made an accounting of Tesla's human cost. The workers at all levels who were chewed up and spit out. The customers who were induced into overreliance on unsafe tech, injuring and killing themselves and others
We still have not yet confronted Tesla's most monstrous creation: a set of incentives that encourages anyone who wants to be the richest person in the world to recklessly endanger the public and simply lie about it. Left unconfronted, these incentives guarantee a dystopian future
Read 13 tweets
The reason that this is so cringey (besides the obvious) is that due to #autonowashing and other factors, many people wrongly believe that L2 Advanced Driver Assistance Systems are capable of reliably detecting stationary objects. They are not.
Our mental models (the knowledge we conceptualize about the systems we use before, during, and after we use them to aid in our understanding & use) are often based on a number of assumptions—some true, some false—and with time & experience better align with the intended model
Read 6 tweets
Fanboys be like "Tesla is such a leader in AV tech that the industry is banding together to take them down."

No fool, the AV industry is coming together to differentiate their shared technology and safety practices from this janky mess. Open your eyes.
Every time one of these half-baked camera-only nightmares crashes, taking out emergency responders or innocent bystanders, someone somewhere decides they will never get in an autonomous vehicle (which Teslas are not). Tesla is a menace to public adoption of this life-saving tech.
Blurring the line between driver assistance and autonomy (#autonowashing) not only leads to misuse of Autopilot and more crashes, but it also leads to misreporting of said crash as being by an "autonomous vehicle"... which leads to lower trust in a technology Tesla doesn't have.
Read 4 tweets
What I'd really like to know from @NHTSAgov's request for #Tesla's #Autopilot information:
- Disengagement & crash rates, because if the real data conflicts with what $TSLA has previously told NHTSA to generate the "40% safer" stat... felony! $TSLAQ 1/5
quality-control.us/nhtsa_autopilo…
- "Full Self Driving" data. The letter wants all Level 2 ADAS data, which includes "Full Self Driving" (#Tesla told CA's DMV FSD's at Level 2).
For starters: Why do influencers get "FSD" ahead of regular customers? What's the real disengagement rate? 2/5
- Marketing and public communications. This is HUGE. It's the cornerstone of #Tesla's #Autonowashing fraud. Internal cover-your-ass emails from a general counsel warning "calling it FSD is bad" will make Tesla ripe for Congressional investigation. $TSLA $TSLAQ 3/5
Read 5 tweets
It is so, so disappointing to hear this kind of clueless, conspiratorial ranting from someone who is formally associated with the Society of Automotive Engineers.

Just Facebook-tier boomer cringe, from start to finish.
"Are we going to see General Motors or VW or Mercedes or any of the other car companies... are we seeing what they've come up with?

No! It's crap. It's crap. I've driven almost every self-driving car, or even Autopilot car, and it's crap."

~Sandy Munro 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️ #autonowashing
Had Munro tried to engage with the substance of Autopilot safety concerns as clearly established by multiple NTSB investigations, we might have a debate on our hands. He didn't even try. Just straight to conspiracy theories and righteous boomer anger.

I'm embarrassed for him.
Read 6 tweets
🚨 #Tesla's @Theranos-level LIDAR Lies 🚨
During Tesla's "AI Day", its representative said, "Here, we have a real clip that was gotten from a car. It then goes through an auto-labelling pipeline to create a 3-D reconstruction of the scene..." $TSLA $TSLAQ 1/9
He's technically not lying. But he's omitting that the "Real World Clip" was obtained from a #Tesla company car mounting LIDAR sensors (examples below). This builds upon @ValueDissenter's excellent thread on Tesla cheating with LIDAR sensors. 2/9
Here's why I'm also sure. #Tesla's LIDAR rigs feature static lidar sensors angled downwards. So there will be blind spots, especially during turns with high objects above. See how the canopies are cut-off? The camera - and the audience - can see them. The LIDAR didn't. 3/9
Read 10 tweets
This might be one of the most important articles ever written about #autonowashing.

Please read, especially if you have doubted the relevance of this problem.

👇👇👇

cleantechnica.com/2021/05/09/tha… via @JenniferSensiba $TSLA
Autonowashing is a concern for us all, because its consequences have the potential to effect us all.

Those who want to see driving automation advance & succeed—especially, and no matter what companies you root for—have an interest in speaking out against this issue.
Autonowashing is *not* limited to any one entity. This problem is rampant across the industry.

Tesla is discussed in relation to autonowashing, proportionately, as they continue to do the most obvious autonowashing of any OEM.
Read 4 tweets
HBD, #autonowashing! 🥳

One year ago today, "Autonowashing: The Greenwashing of Vehicle Automation” was published.

What is it?
What’s the objective?
What does it look like?
What are its effects?
Why did I do this?
Has it made a difference?

A thread 🧵

sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
Autonowashing makes a system appear to be more autonomous than it really is.

It is a misrepresentation of the appropriate level of human interaction required to operate a system safely.

This word is currently most often used in association with partial (L2) driving automation.
1️⃣ Why does it happen?

Well, there’s no good reason to confuse people about that capabilities of automation and their role in using it…especially safety-critical systems!

At its original source, autonowashing is a form disinformation and it is, in a sense, viral. Image
Read 25 tweets
We don't know exactly what happened in the fatal crash that killed a Tesla driver yesterday, and we don't know if any driving automation was involved. This is a thread about what we do know, some of which suggests it may be another in a growing string of Autopilot-involved deaths
The initial reporting on the crash is here: losangeles.cbslocal.com/2021/05/05/tes…

Today, the @sbcountysheriff released the name of the deceased: Steven Hendrickson, a 35 year-old male: wp.sbcounty.gov/sheriff/media-…

I've found what appear to be his social media pages, and there are troubling posts.
The most troubling posts are on what appears to be his TikTok account. The posts show him using his Tesla's driving automation in traffic, describing it as "FSD" and "selfdriving," and describing his state has "tired" and "bored"

tiktok.com/@shendrickson2…

tiktok.com/@shendrickson2…
Read 14 tweets
Does it matter what you call a Level 2 driver assistance system? A novel study from the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety shows that it definitely does, further validating the concerns @lizadixon voiced in her influential #Autonowashing paper aaafoundation.org/impact-of-info…
Basically, AAA looked at user mental models and behavior when two groups used the same Level 2 system... with one group they called it DriveAssist and the other they called it AutonoDrive (it was actually SuperCruise lol). The findings were pretty conclusive: names drive behavior
Folks... this is not good. Basically, branding is more powerful than even our own experience using a system. Everyone is going to say "yeah, but I'm not THAT dumb" but scientifically speaking you almost certainly are.
Read 7 tweets
.@EuroNCAP has announced its new Assisted Driving Grading system which takes a holistic approach to sys evaluation by including "Driver Engagement" in its rating, to "help consumers" &to "compare assistance performance @ the highest level."

euroncap.com/en/press-media… ht @sascha_p Image
This is a win for human-automation interaction/HMI researchers who have been working for decades to explain how important teaming is and the consequences of broken control loops.

This is a win against #autonowashing, and ultimately a big win for consumer transparency & safety!
Further, @EuroNCAP also released the results of their 2020 Assisted Driving Tests with the new grading system and gave ten different ADAS systems a rating:

- Very Good
- Good
- Moderate
- Entry

The results...
Read 4 tweets
Self-driving is hard.

We have different ideas about how to “solve” for L5, and various teams are all taking shots at it. In recent years, two schools of thought have emerged about how to approach solving this problem.

🧵👇
For some it is either:

1) a fundamental AI problem which needs a new approach
2) a data problem, which can be solved by more data & more simulation
Some see the greatest challenge as developing the right AI approach.

Others believe that they already have the right approach, and therefore the challenge is acquiring more (and the right) data and doing more training.

Imo, there is some truth in both schools of thought.
Read 8 tweets
ICYMI: @LADOTofficial's General Manager, @seletajewel, discusses autonowashing on The Future of Autonomous Vehicles with @JoannMuller (@ 32:15)

axios.com/axios-event-fu… via @axios #AxiosEvents
Autonowashing makes something appear to be more autonomous that it really is.

Here, Seleta Reynolds refers to #autonowashing as a general hype + unmet promises of the entire self-driving industry

And it's true––this is autonowashing, too. This is the effect it has @ scale.
Autonowashing is not progressive.
Autonowashing is friendly fire.

And not just to the brands engaging in it, but to the broader industry as a whole.
Read 4 tweets
Thread. Details surrounding this accident aren’t clear (i.e. was Autopilot active? Driver healthy?), but this is a familiar accident scenario for AP

AP is not equipped to detect stationary objects...imagine calling a system that lacks this “Full Self-Driving” 🥴 #autonowashing
I believe this is Chinese and confirming that AP was active. Can anyone translate to be sure?

國道警察初步瞭解,特斯拉車主表示有開啟車輛輔助功能,但發現前方有貨車時已來不及而撞上

via news.ltn.com.tw/news/society/b…
This site & two native speakers have confirmed that the driver told officials Tesla Autopilot was active. The driver expected AP to respond and when it did not he applied brakes (aka visible white smoke?) but it was too late to avoid impact.

udn.com/news/story/732… ImageImageImage
Read 4 tweets
Reading a study about Tesla Autopilot + trust

There are some unreal quotes in here taken directly from @TeslaMotorsClub forums, including descriptions of repeated poor performance under familiar conditions which have led to passenger injury in other instances

Some examples👇
@TeslaMotorsClub Autopilot is an advanced driver assistance system. It's normal & expected that it struggles on-road under certain conditions...which is why it requires full-time, driver supervision and hands on the wheel

Promoting it as anything more is #autonowashing
@TeslaMotorsClub Another ex of Autopilot's functional limitations: T-Junctions, a common intersection style in which multiple accidents involving AP have occurred

miamiherald.com/news/local/com… *Driver: "Cruise Control was on." 95% certain CC=AP

+Here, an identical scenario is documented in a study:
Read 7 tweets

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